AFP, ASIO heads slam Habib

Reporter: Michael Brissenden

KERRY O'BRIEN: Also in Parliament today, more action on the case of terrorist suspect Mamdouh Habib following his allegations on Sunday that he was tortured in Pakistan, Egypt and Guantanamo Bay over a 40 month period after being picked up in Pakistan shortly after the World Trade Centre attack in 2001. The interest is now centred on two aspects of the case. One, what Mr Habib was actually doing in Pakistan and allegedly Afghanistan in the period leading up to his arrest. Two, the question of torture and Mr Habib's claims that he was secretly taken to Egypt for more interrogation under duress before eventually ending up with the Americans in Guantanamo Bay. On the program last night, Attorney-General Mr Ruddock confirmed that officials from both the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) spoke with Mr Habib in Pakistan, but he could shed no light on Egypt's involvement. Well, today in Senate committee hearings the heads of the AFP and ASIO made specific allegations against Mr Habib. For more on that, Michael Brissenden joins me again from Parliament House. Michael, given that in the end no one has yet pressed any charges against Mamdouh Habib it was pretty startling to hear what both the head of AFP, Mick Keelty, and the head of ASIO, Denis Richardson, had to say and the way they outlined quite specific allegations against Mamdouh Habib. I can't think of a precedent to be honest.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Well, look, it certainly was a pretty forceful case. The two men, two of Australia's top security intelligence chiefs, basically detailed the case that they have, they think they have against Mr Habib. They say that they believe that he was essentially trying to sell himself as a mercenary to Al Qaeda and that the allegations of torture were, in essence, used to cover up what he was doing in Afghanistan, used as a cover for his time in Afghanistan. Denis Richardson today described the torture allegations as "humbug". But let's have a look at a few of the things that they said today in those committees.

MICK KEELTY (FEDERAL POLICE COMMISSIONER): Material was gathered in terms of what Mr Habib had to say. The investigators also went to Pakistan to try and gather evidence on what Mr Habib was doing in Pakistan. The allegation was that he had been training with LET, the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist group, in Pakistan that he had been in Afghanistan and that he had been supported financially by the LET. They have, in layman's terms, a halfway house where they accommodate and train and feed people. He was trained in specific areas, as we understood it, in terms of firearms training and that was a precursor to his crossing the border to Afghanistan and being accepted as part of the efforts of Al Qaeda.

MAN: And then in respect of that interview, did Mr Habib raise any allegations of his treatment in Guantanamo Bay?

MICK KEELTY: Mr Habib only ever raised issues about his treatment. He raised them in the interviews in Pakistan, not about his treatment by Pakistan authorities, but he raised them in the context of alleging that he had been kidnapped and tortured by people in yellow uniforms. That allegation, in the circumstances of his prevarication in his answers, was not treated seriously. The period of time he was talking about, it was considered that he was covering for the period of time that he had been in Afghanistan with Al Qaeda.

DENIS RICHARDSON (DIRECTOR-GENERAL, ASIO): We had a fairly good idea of what he'd been up to. He was actually with people in Afghanistan who have a history of murdering innocent civilians, rather than actually being kidnapped by anyone. So his claim about him being kidnapped while he was in Afghanistan and tortured simply lacked credibility in terms of what we knew.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Michael, I think part of the whole mystery in this affair is whether Mr Habib really was taken from Pakistan to Egypt for further interrogation, who took him and how he then allegedly was taken to Afghanistan again, back on to Guantanamo. Mr Ruddock, the Attorney-General, had no answers on that last night. I wonder what further light was shed on that today?

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Yes, the Egypt question is becoming central here, and today Denis Richardson said that he could confirm that ASIO had told him that Habib had been in Egypt, but he said for operational reasons, he couldn't say how that conclusion had been reached. But before Mr Richardson gave that evidence, Mr Keelty was on the stand and he basically said that they were unable to confirm if he had been in Egypt or not and that, when they had interviewed him in Guantanamo Bay, he had claimed that he had been, all that he could say was that he had heard people speaking the Egyptian language. This is what Mr Keelty told the committee today.

MICK KEELTY: When Mr Habib was interviewed on May 15, 2002 in Guantanamo Bay, he was unsure himself whether he had been to Egypt. All he knew was that he had been to a place where the people who were dealing with him spoke Egyptian.

MAN: And so did the Australian Federal Police make inquiries to ascertain whether he'd been in Egypt or not?

MICK KEELTY: No, we didn't. It wasn't within our purview to be able to make those inquiries.

MAN: Was the AFP advised or kept informed by other agencies about either his movements, his whereabouts or what interviews he'd had during that period?

MICK KEELTY: We were unsure, because he wasn't in AFP custody. To put some context around this, his capture in early October 2001 was less than a month after the World Trade Centre collapse in which 3,000 people, innocent people going to work had lost their lives. His capture was similar to the capture of a number of people from a number of nations around the world thought to have been sympathisers or fighters with Al Qaeda at the time, and so we were dealing with something, if you put it in the context of 2001 and early 2002, we were dealing with something that was quite foreign in terms of criminal law enforcement, and so we were, if you like, learning as we went.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So what happens now, Michael? The Americans have washed their hands of Mr Habib, Australia's taken his passport, but there are no further charges pending. Is the ball now back in Mr Habib's court as to whether he then carries out his bluff and sues the Australian Government?

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Well, I think in essence it is. I mean, Mr Habib's lawyer today said that he thought that all of this stuff going in the committee was an attempt who discredit his client, who he says, as we know, is threatening to sue the Government. The Attorney-General says he wants to know more about what Mr Habib was doing in Afghanistan and Mr Habib says he'll only tell us what he was doing in Afghanistan, only tell a judge in such a court case. So it seems to me that the only way we're going to get any further information out of this is through the courts, if indeed that does go ahead.

KERRY O'BRIEN: When I said Mr Habib's bluff, it was a slip of the tongue. I actually meant whether he would carry out his threat. As far as Mr Ruddock's concerned now, there is that question hanging about whether there may be some scope for a charge with relation to Afghanistan, but these things are just left hanging now?

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Well they are and they're also clouded by the fact that there is still obviously some question about how the evidence was gathered, whether it was gathered under duress, as the Opposition claimed yesterday. If it was, then of course that would be inadmissible in court.